Background
Ogawa was born in 1917 in Shizuoka Prefecture.
小川 誠
Ogawa was born in 1917 in Shizuoka Prefecture.
In August 1938 he graduated as a member of the 72nd class of students.
In carrying out his duties, he downed the highest number of B-29s among the pilots in his air group—seven confirmed—and also two North American P-51 Mustangs. He enlisted in the army when he was 18 and was assigned to the 7th Air Regiment based at Hamamatsu Airfield located north of the city of Hamamatsu in his home prefecture. After a few years, he enrolled in the Kumagaya Army Flying School to learn to fly fighters.
Instead of being posted to a combat squadron in China, he was kept at the school as an assistant instructor.
He flew for three years and gained a high level of skill in piloting fighters. By then, American heavy bombers had begun to bomb Japan itself, so to counter the attacks the 70th Sentai was transferred, in November 1944, to Kashiwa, Chiba, northeast of Tokyo.
Ogawa found that the B-29s were more vulnerable when they were maintaining level flight in their bombing runs and could not employ evasive maneuvers. Exploiting this weakness during night actions, he shot two of the bombers down by frontal attack, firing at the nose.
He continued with his aerial successes and by August 1945 when the war ended, he had built up a confirmed score of seven B-29 bombers downed, as well as two P-51 Mustang fighters.
This made him the highest scoring pilot against B-29s in the 70th Sentai, his air group. By the order of General Shizuichi Tanaka, on 9 July 1945 Ogawa was awarded the Bukosho, the highest military honor given to living IJA personnel during World World War World War II At the same time he was commissioned as an officer with the rank of second lieutenant. After the war Ogawa became a businessman.
He lives in Tokyo.